E36 M3 Evo - Track and B road hack
Discussion
I’ve had a thread running on this car here https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=47&t=1403560 for a few years, however following the whole photo Phuket debacle, rather than rake through years of posts replacing all the pictures, I thought I would just start again. (Although photobucket have turned the pictures back on again “temporarily“ – but that is a different story).
So here, once again, is my entry into the barrel scraping end of the M car market. The plan has been to create a Clubsport M3 (without the expensive carbon fibre). Something I could use on track but without the need of trailer or the need to feel too precious about it.
This thread may upset the OEM boys and girls but the car was well on it’s way to becoming parts before I stepped in so I don’t feel too bad about it and the E36 M3 was far from perfect in stock form anyway.
If I rewind to 2014, I was all set to buy a clio 172 cup as my new track car until a mate convinced me to enter the ropey end of the M3 market.
Now I’ve always said there is no such thing as a cheap BMW. I’ve proved this theory before and this little adventure is doing little to change my mind, although the appreciating values of these cars does help take the edge off of costs.
I looked at a number of cars and it would be fair to say even in 2014, E36 M3’s were getting fairly thin on the ground and you were having to take what you could get. After viewing a number of different cars a deal was done.
A picture on the way home from collecting the car.
Don’t let the photo fool you, I think the bonnet badge better sets the tone.
Or maybe the front seats
And the gear knob has seen some.....use
It’s not the worst M3 I have ever seen. It not even the second or third but it would be fair to say I won’t be winning any concourse events in the near future. (Especially given the quality of some of the rebuilds on here now, which are really nice).
Its wasn’t all bad. The car came with a full service history backed with wedge of receipts (mainly for tyres but proof of VANOs filter changes), a decent slug of MOT, an original BMW tool kit, torch and the still plastic wrapped original first aid kit.
Flicking through the history, the car was owned by a guy in Essex for the 10 years previous. He sold it to the person I purchased it off about 3 months before I purchased it. I was told the vendor had another baby on the way so it was being replaced by an estate but I couldn’t help but wonder whether the seller had done the sums on the impending bills and decided this cheap M3 was anything but.
I don’t like buying cars I know have faults, it makes me uncomfortable. I take the view that if I can spot issues in a 10 minutes’ walk around just imagine how many there really are.
My 10 minute walk around told me;
- Rear tyres were down to the marker
- The spare wheel had no tyre on it
- The rear dampers were leaking
- Rear arches had some rust and there was a tiny spot on bubbling by the boot lid.
- A number of the bushes were shot
- The rear leather seats that look like somebody had carried live stock or given birth on them.
- Brake discs had sizable lips on all round (but decent pads)
I took the view that none of this really mattered for what I had in mind and hoped I hadn’t missed too much. That and the fact that the list of faults was fairly tame compared to some of the others I had seen.
The drive home and subsequent ownership have further confirmed;
• First gear and reverse pretty much disappeared once the gearbox has become warm (common problem caused by the rubber clutch line)
• The heater is stuck on cold (I checked that the aircon worked but not the heater blew warm. Typical)
• The passenger seat doesn’t appear to fold down
• It has heated seats. These don’t work
• The Radio doesn’t work
Thankfully a subsequent look underneath on a two post lift seemed to suggest that it’s fundamentally a solid car underneath (for what is a cheap M3).
The immediate plan was to do the basics by upgrading the brakes, suspension and bushes and go driving and try to avoid making the car mint, as that would miss the point of buying cheap in the first place.
To be continued……
I would be lying if I said I wasn't looking at leather seat restorers the week after I bought the thing so I’m not sure how this will eventually pan out. It could be expensive.
First job was to book a slot at a self-service garage to give me access to a lift and change the front wishbone bushes with polybushed items.
As was the way with these things, while one bush took all of 10 minutes to change (helped by access to hydraulic presses at the garage) the other one took about two hours as it refused to slide off the wishbone. An electric drill and fire eventually solved the problem.
I had hoped to fit the coilovers that day but it turned out that most of the suspension nuts had locktight applied at some point making removal difficult.
Having failed to remove the bolts with my trusty ebay Snap-on air wrench, bent a breaker bar and having damaged one of the nut heads in the process I decided to call that a day and focus on the easy stuff and swapped the brakes over and bled the hydraulic lines.
Stripping the brakes back revealed that the car generally still contained original BMW parts including the expensive floating discs which is always a good sign.
I used www.rampandwrench.co.uk to hire the lift and I can’t recommend them enough. Half an hour before closing time I brought the car down to pack up and found the clutch went floor.
To cut a long story down, when bleeding the clutch line it turns out BMW recommend you use a pressured bleed kit. What they actually mean is it’s impossible to do the normal way and you will fill your clutch line with air if you try.
The guys helped me fix the issue past closing time to get me on my way even though really it was my own daft fault for not reading up on the subject properly and not bleeding the system under pressure, so top marks to them.
With time against me before my first planned track day, I decided to cheat and booked into a local garage to fit the coilovers, fit the rear trailing arm bushes and swap my clutch line over (cause of the poor gear change), as the connector had seized meaning I was unable to change it while it was on the lift.
This however wasn’t quite as successful as I had hoped. The clutch line and bushes were sorted but the car returned still on the same old suspension. Turns out that you need spacers to fit HSD’s to an E36 M3, not that there is any mention of this in the product specs, the instructions or on the phone by the guys who sold them to me. It would have been nice to know that before I had handed the car over. Hence a phone call from the garage telling me they had swapped over the front suspension and the wheels wouldn’t go back on.
Luckily I managed to fit the suspension myself on my driveway in-between the 15 other jobs and the intermittent rain showers we had over that Easter, in preparation for the 15mm spacers I had on order.
Removing the old dampers highlighted just how done they were.
With the suspension on, the new spacers were fitted giving the required clearance allowing me to drop the car back onto its wheels.
However its first track day was not to be, as taking the car round the corner to get the alignment sorted highlighted that one of the inner track rod ends was knackered. A quick dash round the local motor factors failed to turn up the required part, which was doubly irritating as I had already dropped the car into a different garage a week before to investigate the track rods and the car was given the all clear.
The car then sat in the corner for 4 months while I got married and generally did more important things than mess round with ropey old BMW’s.
I finally blew the dust off and made it out on track at Bedford in the August of 2014.
Here it is with a friend’s equally ropey track M3 (and another friends rather lovely CSL. When we said we were all going to buy old M3’s for track days……).
Other than my undertray coming loose half way through the day, the car proved that with a little bit of TLC, it was able to mix it with the big boys.
I have to say, that given the car was 17 years old, I was seriously impressed with its capability.
As the day approached, I started the final push to get the car usable.
When I purchased the car, it had supposedly just been serviced although checking the car over, the definition of service appears to have been oil change.
Therefore I decided to replace any service item I didn’t like the look of. The apologetic request for £70 of the Queens finest from the guy at the GFS parts desk for 6 spark plugs pretty much sums up the situation when running one these cars. The running costs have not depreciated with the purchase price.
While not brand new, the air filter looks new enough so for now I have left that all where it is. It would be annoying to replace all that stuff only for the engine to let go on the first track day.
However I have taken the opportunity to swap out the VANO’s filter. The old one looked reassuring clean which is always a good sign.
I also got a new set of calliper bleed bolts and replaced the front passenger side nipple as it was so corroded I couldn’t get a spanner on it to bleed the brakes.
I had to file the old one down so I could get enough leverage to remove it. It does focus the mind somewhat knowing that, as your filing, if it doesn’t work you’re going to need to stump up for a new calliper.
I also swapped out one of the hub bolts that I had made a mess of when changing the suspension. BMW wanted over £30 for 10, so I ordered some stainless steel ones off the internet for about a tenth of the price per nut.
Back when I started this project I had to endure a particularly chilly drive to drive to a self-service garage as the heating didn’t work and I was keen to get that fixed.
Reading around, the suggestion was it most likely to be heater control valve and at over £200 for a new one, the starting point was to strip down the old one to see if it could be revived.
Opening it up, I discovered a bit of gunk and a broken wire (although I half suspect I broke the wire opening it up). I soldered the wire back together, cleaned out the mechanism and lined it with PTFE to help the mechanism move more freely.
Reinstalling the valve revealed that I now have half working heating. The digital temperature control still doesn’t seem to do seem to do that much but there is a manual adjuster below the central heating vent which now turns the heating from cold to very hot, so that will do for now.
After it’s first trackday, my natural tendency to want to fix stuff got the better of me and I couldn’t take a moment longer of looking at the rusty arches:
So with the help of my local body shop I got the arches cut out and replaced.
Even they commented how straight the rest of the exterior was for its age which is always reassuring (although they agreed with my assessment of the interior).
On the way home from the body shop I dropped the car off for an MOT which it passed first time.
With the car ready to roll, I got a late track day at Bedford in November. Another great day and really built up some speed over the day, although on the last lap of the day I nearly suffered the curse of the new bodywork by taking a trip over the grass:
A little too much speed through one of the high speed corners saw the tail come round faster than I would like.
And that was 2014. Over the next few years I have done a couple of major changes;
• I’ve played with different brake setups and finally settled on AP 4 pots with Pagid RS29’s, which I must admit are the nuts. (And they should be for the cost). I tried various combinations of Pagid and EBC pads in the stock setup and never got a result I was happy with.
• Replaced the driver’s seat with a Recaro pole positon which has massively improved my seating position, keeping the three point belt.
• Not replaced the oil level sensor as it turns out the correct one is over £100 for a sensor so I have left the warning light flashing at me.
• Spent another chunk of money having the drivers side sill/lower front wing repaired after a little too much poking around lead me to finding a big rust whole in the car
• Various servicing work to bring the car back up to standard including all the diff and gearbox oil (big difference), and redone the belts and various odds and ends.
• Replaced the power steering systems to stop the car dropping power steering fluid everywhere.
• Replaced the lower ball joints on the rear suspension (pig of a job).
Of all of these changes, it’s the AP’s I should talk about. I debated long and hard about which brakes to buy and spent a good year deciding what to do.
Having read the reviews and looking at all the feedback I could find, AP’s were the cheapest setup to get a universally good write up whereas every other cheaper combination of big brake setup gets mixed reviews and yet still costs major money.
On the road, other than slightly better pedal modulation and a marginally harder pedal, I don’t think you would notice to be honest but on the track, the braking is in a different league.
Not so much in the braking power (which is greater than the standard setup) but it’s the resistance to fade which really stands out.
I should also mention the rear outer ball joints. When I did this job I was pleasantly surprised that within an hour of opening the garage door the first ball joint was sitting on my drive with its replacement firmly in place.
However the second ball joint of the day was about to remind me why I should stop working on cars myself and start paying people to do this nonsense for me.
The bolt through the ball joint was seized solid. At first I thought it was just the nut welded to the bolt but after grinding it away (which took ages as you can never get quite the angle you want on to the bolt), it turned out the bolt was firmly welded into the ball joint.
Another hour or two spent lying on my back, under the car, spraying myself with hot metal fragments, cutting the head of the bolt allowed me to separate the lower control arm and get better access but the bolt remained firmly welded to the inside of the bush and no amount of air chiselling, penetrating oil and hammer bashing, even when combined with the carefree use of fire, would persuade the bolt otherwise.
Even the old “use a g-clamp like a press” failed to shift it, achieving very little other than ruining a rather nice G-Clamp.
Residing myself to having to drop the whole trailing arm, I began to strip the suspension down when a thunderstorm stopped play for the day.
The post “wasted day” sulk and inevitable search of ebay for “a magic tool to fix all my problems” turned up a ball joint press designed for just such an occasion. One package from Germany later plus a meter long breaker bar and the ball joint was out.
Whether it was replacing the ball joints themselves or just being able to now adjust the alignment now means that the car actually handles properly rather than drifts to the left which is nice.
The rust repair on the sill started like this after I broke the first rule of rust club, don’t poke the rust.
The fix required repairs to the floor, wing and sill which actually cost more than getting both arches repaired.
That pretty much brings me up to 2018, so here are a few gratuitous pictures before I update on that lot.
First job was to book a slot at a self-service garage to give me access to a lift and change the front wishbone bushes with polybushed items.
As was the way with these things, while one bush took all of 10 minutes to change (helped by access to hydraulic presses at the garage) the other one took about two hours as it refused to slide off the wishbone. An electric drill and fire eventually solved the problem.
I had hoped to fit the coilovers that day but it turned out that most of the suspension nuts had locktight applied at some point making removal difficult.
Having failed to remove the bolts with my trusty ebay Snap-on air wrench, bent a breaker bar and having damaged one of the nut heads in the process I decided to call that a day and focus on the easy stuff and swapped the brakes over and bled the hydraulic lines.
Stripping the brakes back revealed that the car generally still contained original BMW parts including the expensive floating discs which is always a good sign.
I used www.rampandwrench.co.uk to hire the lift and I can’t recommend them enough. Half an hour before closing time I brought the car down to pack up and found the clutch went floor.
To cut a long story down, when bleeding the clutch line it turns out BMW recommend you use a pressured bleed kit. What they actually mean is it’s impossible to do the normal way and you will fill your clutch line with air if you try.
The guys helped me fix the issue past closing time to get me on my way even though really it was my own daft fault for not reading up on the subject properly and not bleeding the system under pressure, so top marks to them.
With time against me before my first planned track day, I decided to cheat and booked into a local garage to fit the coilovers, fit the rear trailing arm bushes and swap my clutch line over (cause of the poor gear change), as the connector had seized meaning I was unable to change it while it was on the lift.
This however wasn’t quite as successful as I had hoped. The clutch line and bushes were sorted but the car returned still on the same old suspension. Turns out that you need spacers to fit HSD’s to an E36 M3, not that there is any mention of this in the product specs, the instructions or on the phone by the guys who sold them to me. It would have been nice to know that before I had handed the car over. Hence a phone call from the garage telling me they had swapped over the front suspension and the wheels wouldn’t go back on.
Luckily I managed to fit the suspension myself on my driveway in-between the 15 other jobs and the intermittent rain showers we had over that Easter, in preparation for the 15mm spacers I had on order.
Removing the old dampers highlighted just how done they were.
With the suspension on, the new spacers were fitted giving the required clearance allowing me to drop the car back onto its wheels.
However its first track day was not to be, as taking the car round the corner to get the alignment sorted highlighted that one of the inner track rod ends was knackered. A quick dash round the local motor factors failed to turn up the required part, which was doubly irritating as I had already dropped the car into a different garage a week before to investigate the track rods and the car was given the all clear.
The car then sat in the corner for 4 months while I got married and generally did more important things than mess round with ropey old BMW’s.
I finally blew the dust off and made it out on track at Bedford in the August of 2014.
Here it is with a friend’s equally ropey track M3 (and another friends rather lovely CSL. When we said we were all going to buy old M3’s for track days……).
Other than my undertray coming loose half way through the day, the car proved that with a little bit of TLC, it was able to mix it with the big boys.
I have to say, that given the car was 17 years old, I was seriously impressed with its capability.
As the day approached, I started the final push to get the car usable.
When I purchased the car, it had supposedly just been serviced although checking the car over, the definition of service appears to have been oil change.
Therefore I decided to replace any service item I didn’t like the look of. The apologetic request for £70 of the Queens finest from the guy at the GFS parts desk for 6 spark plugs pretty much sums up the situation when running one these cars. The running costs have not depreciated with the purchase price.
While not brand new, the air filter looks new enough so for now I have left that all where it is. It would be annoying to replace all that stuff only for the engine to let go on the first track day.
However I have taken the opportunity to swap out the VANO’s filter. The old one looked reassuring clean which is always a good sign.
I also got a new set of calliper bleed bolts and replaced the front passenger side nipple as it was so corroded I couldn’t get a spanner on it to bleed the brakes.
I had to file the old one down so I could get enough leverage to remove it. It does focus the mind somewhat knowing that, as your filing, if it doesn’t work you’re going to need to stump up for a new calliper.
I also swapped out one of the hub bolts that I had made a mess of when changing the suspension. BMW wanted over £30 for 10, so I ordered some stainless steel ones off the internet for about a tenth of the price per nut.
Back when I started this project I had to endure a particularly chilly drive to drive to a self-service garage as the heating didn’t work and I was keen to get that fixed.
Reading around, the suggestion was it most likely to be heater control valve and at over £200 for a new one, the starting point was to strip down the old one to see if it could be revived.
Opening it up, I discovered a bit of gunk and a broken wire (although I half suspect I broke the wire opening it up). I soldered the wire back together, cleaned out the mechanism and lined it with PTFE to help the mechanism move more freely.
Reinstalling the valve revealed that I now have half working heating. The digital temperature control still doesn’t seem to do seem to do that much but there is a manual adjuster below the central heating vent which now turns the heating from cold to very hot, so that will do for now.
After it’s first trackday, my natural tendency to want to fix stuff got the better of me and I couldn’t take a moment longer of looking at the rusty arches:
So with the help of my local body shop I got the arches cut out and replaced.
Even they commented how straight the rest of the exterior was for its age which is always reassuring (although they agreed with my assessment of the interior).
On the way home from the body shop I dropped the car off for an MOT which it passed first time.
With the car ready to roll, I got a late track day at Bedford in November. Another great day and really built up some speed over the day, although on the last lap of the day I nearly suffered the curse of the new bodywork by taking a trip over the grass:
A little too much speed through one of the high speed corners saw the tail come round faster than I would like.
And that was 2014. Over the next few years I have done a couple of major changes;
• I’ve played with different brake setups and finally settled on AP 4 pots with Pagid RS29’s, which I must admit are the nuts. (And they should be for the cost). I tried various combinations of Pagid and EBC pads in the stock setup and never got a result I was happy with.
• Replaced the driver’s seat with a Recaro pole positon which has massively improved my seating position, keeping the three point belt.
• Not replaced the oil level sensor as it turns out the correct one is over £100 for a sensor so I have left the warning light flashing at me.
• Spent another chunk of money having the drivers side sill/lower front wing repaired after a little too much poking around lead me to finding a big rust whole in the car
• Various servicing work to bring the car back up to standard including all the diff and gearbox oil (big difference), and redone the belts and various odds and ends.
• Replaced the power steering systems to stop the car dropping power steering fluid everywhere.
• Replaced the lower ball joints on the rear suspension (pig of a job).
Of all of these changes, it’s the AP’s I should talk about. I debated long and hard about which brakes to buy and spent a good year deciding what to do.
Having read the reviews and looking at all the feedback I could find, AP’s were the cheapest setup to get a universally good write up whereas every other cheaper combination of big brake setup gets mixed reviews and yet still costs major money.
On the road, other than slightly better pedal modulation and a marginally harder pedal, I don’t think you would notice to be honest but on the track, the braking is in a different league.
Not so much in the braking power (which is greater than the standard setup) but it’s the resistance to fade which really stands out.
I should also mention the rear outer ball joints. When I did this job I was pleasantly surprised that within an hour of opening the garage door the first ball joint was sitting on my drive with its replacement firmly in place.
However the second ball joint of the day was about to remind me why I should stop working on cars myself and start paying people to do this nonsense for me.
The bolt through the ball joint was seized solid. At first I thought it was just the nut welded to the bolt but after grinding it away (which took ages as you can never get quite the angle you want on to the bolt), it turned out the bolt was firmly welded into the ball joint.
Another hour or two spent lying on my back, under the car, spraying myself with hot metal fragments, cutting the head of the bolt allowed me to separate the lower control arm and get better access but the bolt remained firmly welded to the inside of the bush and no amount of air chiselling, penetrating oil and hammer bashing, even when combined with the carefree use of fire, would persuade the bolt otherwise.
Even the old “use a g-clamp like a press” failed to shift it, achieving very little other than ruining a rather nice G-Clamp.
Residing myself to having to drop the whole trailing arm, I began to strip the suspension down when a thunderstorm stopped play for the day.
The post “wasted day” sulk and inevitable search of ebay for “a magic tool to fix all my problems” turned up a ball joint press designed for just such an occasion. One package from Germany later plus a meter long breaker bar and the ball joint was out.
Whether it was replacing the ball joints themselves or just being able to now adjust the alignment now means that the car actually handles properly rather than drifts to the left which is nice.
The rust repair on the sill started like this after I broke the first rule of rust club, don’t poke the rust.
The fix required repairs to the floor, wing and sill which actually cost more than getting both arches repaired.
That pretty much brings me up to 2018, so here are a few gratuitous pictures before I update on that lot.
TheDukeGTi said:
I bet the pole position does a lot for that too. Was always on my list of things to do 
I’m a big fan of the pole postion although not so much of the price tag. I keep toying with the idea of getting a second for the passenger side but the cost is somewhat inhibitive. However I might try a Recaro SPG next time as apparently they work better with taller drivers. Love the Alfa btw.
Dylan318Ti said:
I didn't follow the "don't poke the rust" policy and am now welding two rear jacking points and one front on my E36, has been a really big job.
Fair play to you, I out sourced that job as I don’t know one end of a welder from another. So 2018. I dragged the car out of its long term storage in May, having done little with it for about a year, other than get the sill repaired.
The plan for this year has been to focus on the cars slightly soft track handling. I’ve never been that convinced by the stock HSD step up.
Therefore the plan was to treat the car to the following upgrades;
• Stiffer springs
• Track tyres – I’ve been using the same set of Goodyear F1 road tyres for the last 4 years and I suspect they have been well and truly cooked a few times now
• Install a cross brace
• Work out where the banging was coming from the rear suspension
In addition to this and the normal servicing work, I also wanted to measure and resize the value shims for the M3. This supposedly should be done every inspection 2, but given the car has been serviced in back street garages since it was three years old, I was sceptical this had ever happened.
I started with the basic service
Then the first order of the day was to rebuild the suspension
Mainly a fairly painless task but one of the front dampers had corroded itself together and despite the car seeing limited amounts of water, it still took some concerted encouragement to undo.
New springs in place, I rebuilt and reinstalled, with a fresh coating of chain oil to keep the corrosion at bay. (HSD’s are not known for their water resistant qualities.).
This rebuild time also allowed me to realise that the top nut has become loose on my rear damper, which had been causing the intermittent knocking at the rear of the car.
I ordered a second hand cross brace off ebay. Maybe I am cynical, but the brace that arrived looked considerably more “pre-owned” than the one in the photo. However some sanding, rust treatment, filler and hammerite bought it to a standard where it was fitable.
At this point I stripped off the valve cover to look at the valve shims. A fairly straightforward job requiring the coilpacks and associated wiring to be removed before lifting off the cover.
I was happy not to be presented with any sludge and not too many signs of burnt oil given the cars age and milage.
Valve shiming on these is a fairly time consuming job as you have to measure once, put it all back together, order the parts from BMW, collect the parts the next day, then repeat the process.
However it all seemed to go back together well enough and the car ran afterwards which is always a good sign. Not sure if the car runs any different but at least I can say it’s done.
The final piece of upgrade was a set of Pilot cup 2’s from Camskill. I picked up a set of old E46 wheels for buttons as at the time Michelin were only doing two sizes for 17 inch wheels, so I needed to move to a square 225/45/17 setup, rather than the stock staggered setup.
The wheels don't look that good but the tyres grip well and it was a lot cheaper than hunting down a set of original Motorsports in a square setup which was the other option I was considering.
The car was then aligned by a local motorsport company and then off to Anglesey for its first shakedown run.
I managed to get a good dry run out on track in the morning before the weather at Anglesey did what it is famous for.
After that, the rain set in for the day, so it was back onto road tyres for some “7/10 tenths” laps in the rain. The handling now seems really nice, with a lot less understeer and roll. I will need to get it out on another dry day to fully assess the impact, but overall I pleased with the changes.
The setup is now in a really good place, having only taken 4 years to get there!
Apologies for the lack of photos, but it wasn’t a photogenic day, however I will leave you with the obligatory Menai bridge Shell garage photo, from the post trackday fill up.
As ever with old cars, it’s like painting the forth bridge, so on the way there, the airbag light blinked on and the warm idle has got noticeable worse and the fuel cap lock appears to be no longer to be with us.
However now that I am broadly happy with the setup, my focus can be on old car stuff rather than chasing capability.
The plan for this year has been to focus on the cars slightly soft track handling. I’ve never been that convinced by the stock HSD step up.
Therefore the plan was to treat the car to the following upgrades;
• Stiffer springs
• Track tyres – I’ve been using the same set of Goodyear F1 road tyres for the last 4 years and I suspect they have been well and truly cooked a few times now
• Install a cross brace
• Work out where the banging was coming from the rear suspension
In addition to this and the normal servicing work, I also wanted to measure and resize the value shims for the M3. This supposedly should be done every inspection 2, but given the car has been serviced in back street garages since it was three years old, I was sceptical this had ever happened.
I started with the basic service
Then the first order of the day was to rebuild the suspension
Mainly a fairly painless task but one of the front dampers had corroded itself together and despite the car seeing limited amounts of water, it still took some concerted encouragement to undo.
New springs in place, I rebuilt and reinstalled, with a fresh coating of chain oil to keep the corrosion at bay. (HSD’s are not known for their water resistant qualities.).
This rebuild time also allowed me to realise that the top nut has become loose on my rear damper, which had been causing the intermittent knocking at the rear of the car.
I ordered a second hand cross brace off ebay. Maybe I am cynical, but the brace that arrived looked considerably more “pre-owned” than the one in the photo. However some sanding, rust treatment, filler and hammerite bought it to a standard where it was fitable.
At this point I stripped off the valve cover to look at the valve shims. A fairly straightforward job requiring the coilpacks and associated wiring to be removed before lifting off the cover.
I was happy not to be presented with any sludge and not too many signs of burnt oil given the cars age and milage.
Valve shiming on these is a fairly time consuming job as you have to measure once, put it all back together, order the parts from BMW, collect the parts the next day, then repeat the process.
However it all seemed to go back together well enough and the car ran afterwards which is always a good sign. Not sure if the car runs any different but at least I can say it’s done.
The final piece of upgrade was a set of Pilot cup 2’s from Camskill. I picked up a set of old E46 wheels for buttons as at the time Michelin were only doing two sizes for 17 inch wheels, so I needed to move to a square 225/45/17 setup, rather than the stock staggered setup.
The wheels don't look that good but the tyres grip well and it was a lot cheaper than hunting down a set of original Motorsports in a square setup which was the other option I was considering.
The car was then aligned by a local motorsport company and then off to Anglesey for its first shakedown run.
I managed to get a good dry run out on track in the morning before the weather at Anglesey did what it is famous for.
After that, the rain set in for the day, so it was back onto road tyres for some “7/10 tenths” laps in the rain. The handling now seems really nice, with a lot less understeer and roll. I will need to get it out on another dry day to fully assess the impact, but overall I pleased with the changes.
The setup is now in a really good place, having only taken 4 years to get there!
Apologies for the lack of photos, but it wasn’t a photogenic day, however I will leave you with the obligatory Menai bridge Shell garage photo, from the post trackday fill up.
As ever with old cars, it’s like painting the forth bridge, so on the way there, the airbag light blinked on and the warm idle has got noticeable worse and the fuel cap lock appears to be no longer to be with us.
However now that I am broadly happy with the setup, my focus can be on old car stuff rather than chasing capability.
Managed to reset the airbag light after laying my hands on a copy of INPA and translating some German with the help of google. My school boy German didn’t cover “Fahrer Gurtstrammer”.
Looks like I need to get hold of DIS software before I can do a Vanos check to see if that is the cause of the hunting when warm.
Looks like I need to get hold of DIS software before I can do a Vanos check to see if that is the cause of the hunting when warm.
The annual MOT came around and the car threw its first fail in my ownership.
The main fail item will be well known to fellow E36 owners, rusty brake pipes where they go behind the fuel tank, requiring the fuel tank to be dropped and then the lines replaced.
A bit of a pain but frankly it probably makes my life easier, as I have been putting off dropping the rear subframe as I have known that the brake lines were welded to the hardlines with rust, so it may well help with that future job.
Winter hibernation for now ready for next years track season.
The main fail item will be well known to fellow E36 owners, rusty brake pipes where they go behind the fuel tank, requiring the fuel tank to be dropped and then the lines replaced.
A bit of a pain but frankly it probably makes my life easier, as I have been putting off dropping the rear subframe as I have known that the brake lines were welded to the hardlines with rust, so it may well help with that future job.
Winter hibernation for now ready for next years track season.
3 bumps. I never realised this thread was so popular!
Now to the reason the updates have been a bit light. My ropey M3 ownership ended with a bang, or rather with the expensive grinding sound that accompanies metalwork scraping along tarmac.
Quite what happened I can only hypothesise but what I can state for certain is, after a couple of hundred road miles of trouble free driving since my last wheel swap and a pre-track bolt check, three laps into my track day I was left with no threads in the front left hub and three wheels on my wagon.
A post-incident bolt check showed all the other wheels were unaffected by loose bolts or missing threads so the current hypothesis is hub failure caused by the combination of a very hot track day, very sticky tyres, spacers, ebay extending bolts and a car coming up to its 25th birthday.
Subsequent replacement hubs fitted by the new owner (I will get to that) turned out to be twice as thick as the old ones so whether it was wearing non-M hubs or something I don’t know.
The high speed exit of the front wheel destroyed the front wing and the front sill took a small dent from the passing scenery. My rather expensive brake disc became a little less disc shaped, the front hub was toasted and a fog light took one in the eye.
With the help of some mates we managed to lash the spare wheel in place enough to get the car rolled on the back of a recovery truck.
To finish the day off, when I eventually got home, I found that the sickness bug I thought I had managed to avoid from the rest of the family had caught up with me, so I got to spend the evening driving the porcelain bus instead and a few days in bed to think about my next move.
To help my thinking when I was finally felt well enough to leave the house, I was greeted by this on my daily driver. It would be fair to say, I’ve had better weeks.
The heady combination of vomit, trying to move house, a new baby, my usual bodyshop closing and the new one I took it too deciding the repair looked a bit complex caused me to bite a friends hand off when he offered to buy it and return all my expensive track upgrades to me.
The car is now enjoying a gentle retirement as a pampered road car. The plan is to replace the car with a newer model (I’ve had my fill of old cars after this one) but Brexit, a general election and now a pandemic has impacted my intended house move so replacing track cars has not happened as fast as planned.
I’m debating picking up a lightweight cheap hatch to fill in the time before getting back into something more serious.
Now to the reason the updates have been a bit light. My ropey M3 ownership ended with a bang, or rather with the expensive grinding sound that accompanies metalwork scraping along tarmac.
Quite what happened I can only hypothesise but what I can state for certain is, after a couple of hundred road miles of trouble free driving since my last wheel swap and a pre-track bolt check, three laps into my track day I was left with no threads in the front left hub and three wheels on my wagon.
A post-incident bolt check showed all the other wheels were unaffected by loose bolts or missing threads so the current hypothesis is hub failure caused by the combination of a very hot track day, very sticky tyres, spacers, ebay extending bolts and a car coming up to its 25th birthday.
Subsequent replacement hubs fitted by the new owner (I will get to that) turned out to be twice as thick as the old ones so whether it was wearing non-M hubs or something I don’t know.
The high speed exit of the front wheel destroyed the front wing and the front sill took a small dent from the passing scenery. My rather expensive brake disc became a little less disc shaped, the front hub was toasted and a fog light took one in the eye.
With the help of some mates we managed to lash the spare wheel in place enough to get the car rolled on the back of a recovery truck.
To finish the day off, when I eventually got home, I found that the sickness bug I thought I had managed to avoid from the rest of the family had caught up with me, so I got to spend the evening driving the porcelain bus instead and a few days in bed to think about my next move.
To help my thinking when I was finally felt well enough to leave the house, I was greeted by this on my daily driver. It would be fair to say, I’ve had better weeks.
The heady combination of vomit, trying to move house, a new baby, my usual bodyshop closing and the new one I took it too deciding the repair looked a bit complex caused me to bite a friends hand off when he offered to buy it and return all my expensive track upgrades to me.
The car is now enjoying a gentle retirement as a pampered road car. The plan is to replace the car with a newer model (I’ve had my fill of old cars after this one) but Brexit, a general election and now a pandemic has impacted my intended house move so replacing track cars has not happened as fast as planned.
I’m debating picking up a lightweight cheap hatch to fill in the time before getting back into something more serious.
custardkid said:
Most sensible people swap their e36 M3 track car for an e92 M3
That may well be the answer, as they do offer a lot of value for the money right now, even if they are a bit heavy for track work. On another note, I do worry about the day you pass as a sensible person though.
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